On the night of January 21, Sunaina Gupta was riding pillion with her husband Vinod Jaiswal on a motor bike.
Her children, she said, were holding saffron flags with the words “Jai Shri Ram” written on them and travelling in a car.
They were in a motorcade of “around 10 bikes and six cars”, Gupta said, all celebrating the Ram temple inauguration in Ayodhya the next morning, when they entered Naya Nagar, a Muslim quarter in Mira Road, an area north of Mumbai.
Gupta said they were attacked by a crowd with stones, pipes and sticks. She was left with a wound on her head and required three stitches near her eyebrow.
By the next day, the police had registered a first information report. Among the sections of the Indian Penal Code invoked was the one that relates to “attempt to murder”. The police have so far arrested 21 people, including two minors, from the Muslim community. The punishment under this section, a non-bailable offence, is life imprisonment.
Three hours after the Naya Nagar clash, and about 3 km away, a mob stopped Jabir Siraj Ansari while he was driving a couple from Andheri to Bhayandar in his cab.
The mob demanded to see his identity card, his uncle told Scroll. When they saw he was Muslim, the mob allowed his passengers to leave and then attacked Ansari with wooden sticks and stones.
He sustained multiple fractures on his face and nose, and had to be operated on.
But when the local police registered a first information report, the sections invoked were those that involved “causing hurt by dangerous weapon”, a bailable offence. The punishment for such a crime is three years or a fine or both. No arrests have been made in the case.
This story was originally published in scroll.in. Read the full story here.